


Testing 1, 2, 3

by surferofdreams



Series: Trust Yourself When All Men Doubt You [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Torchwood
Genre: Chamber of Secrets, Friendship, Gen, Hogwarts, Library, Magic, Trans Character, ravenclaws
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-17
Updated: 2011-06-17
Packaged: 2017-10-20 12:21:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/212729
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/surferofdreams/pseuds/surferofdreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nat isn't sure he fits in at Hogwarts. He talks to Luna Lovegood about magic, Weevils, and Rifts in Time and Space.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Testing 1, 2, 3

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from the Barenaked Ladies song of the same name.

Hogwarts doesn’t understand him any better than the rest of the world, but at least the adults are willing to compromise on pronouns.

Of course, the fact that he’s living in the girls’ dorm while all the professors call him “Mr. Williams” doesn’t exactly make him popular with most of his year mates.

It gets worse when he, along with the rest of the first year Ravenclaws, starts noticing that while he’s pretty decent at potions, the classes where he actually has to do a lot of the work with his wand are defeating him pretty spectacularly.

That’s not to say that he’s _failing_ , exactly, because he does all his homework, and he’s pretty well up on the _theory_ for the things he’s learning in charms and transfiguration. It’s more that any time he tries to use his wand for things that should be straightforward, like turning a match into a needle, it either goes really strangely, or it doesn’t work at all.

It’s while he’s in the library the first weekend after classes start, looking for a way to make his school bag bigger on the inside than the outside (he could at least understand how it works, even if he can’t actually do it himself), that one of his year mates speaks to him like he’s actually a wizard for the first time since the welcome feast, after which the prefects and Professor Flitwick took all the first year Ravenclaws aside to explain that Nat would be living with the girls.

“Have you ever met an Umgubular Slashkilter?” a lyrical voice called quietly.

“Sorry?” Nat asked, startled from the list of titles and sections Madam Pince had given him. He looked over his left shoulder for the owner of the voice, turning to face who ever it was.

“My father says they live in South Wales. That’s where you’re from, isn’t it?”

It was Luna Lovegood, who slept in the bed next to Nat’s. She was looking at him from the other end of the cramped aisle between shelves, with an expression of curiosity and expectation.

“I’m from Cardiff,” He finally replied. “But I’ve never heard of those before. What do they look like?”

Lovegood tapped her right cheek a few times, as if remembering.

“Their faces are wrinkly, and they don’t have noses. But they have lots of sharp teeth, and they wear these funny suits that are all one piece of cloth. They can be dangerous, if you get too close.”

Nat put the list in his pocket, and thought about it for a second. The physical description didn’t sound familiar, but the ‘funny suits’ comment sparked a memory.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one,” he said, “but my cousin told me a story once, about a kid on his rugby team who told everyone that he almost got attacked by a monster in a boiler suit. Only, when people asked him about it later, he couldn’t even remember talking about it.”

“Hmm,” Lovegood considered. “I’ll have to write my father and ask if they ever cause forgetfulness. That might be why so few people have seen them.” She walked over to the section of shelves that Nat had been searching, and looked at the titles. The aisle they were standing in was a mix of transfiguration books and books on magic done with writing, which was something Nat hadn’t heard of until the librarian suggested it. “What are you looking for? A different way to transfigure things?”

“I wanted to see if there was a way to make the inside of my school bag bigger, so I wouldn’t have to keep going back to the dorm to change my books during lunch. Madam Pince said that there were a couple of different ways to do it, and she gave me a list of places to look.” Nat pulled the small scroll of parchment back out of his pocket, and showed it to the girl he was warming up to.

“Why did you look at runic magic first?” She asked, seeing that the section they were standing in was about three quarters of the way down the list.

“I don’t know if you’ve noticed,” Nat said, slightly prickly, as he remembered some of the other boys not-so-subtly laughing at him when his match turned into a wooden tapestry needle instead of a nickel embroidery needle, after several days of stubbornly practicing through other disasters, “but I can’t exactly rely on my wand work. So I thought I’d start with something I might actually be able to do myself.”

“Hmm,” Lovegood said again, not reacting to the defensive tone of Nat’s reply. “Have you always lived in Cardiff?” She questioned. “Your magic might have been affected by the reality fault that’s there. Not a lot of wizards live there, because magic doesn’t always work like it’s supposed to near the fault.”

Nat blinked a few times in silence, and brought a hand up near his ear, where one of the arms of his glasses rested. The healer who had done them up explained to Nat that most wizards didn’t believe in Cardiff’s reality fault, but mostly didn’t go too close anyway, because myths had a lot of power in the world of magic. But the truth was, while not much was really known about the fault, it _did_ have a significant effect on magic.

The healers had told Nat and his parents that because he had been born and raised so close to the fault in reality (his mother’s bookshop was nearly on top of it, and he used to go there every day after school), he had apparently developed some kind of extra sense, where he could see things most other people couldn’t. It was usually called ‘magic sensing’, because for the most part the extra things that people like Nat saw were wards on buildings, protective charms on jewelry, and things of that nature. Not only had Nat gotten a powerful dose of it from the fault, but he hadn’t grown up in the magical community, so the first time he was introduced to a powerful, complicated combination of wards and charms at the passage to Diagon Alley in the Leaky Cauldron, he went into psychic shock and had to take an emergency portkey to the hospital, St. Mungo’s.

Nat didn’t find any of this out until he had woken up to a healer scanning him with a wand while Ms. Michaels, the woman who was helping his family into the world of magic, tried to keep his parents from panicking too much more than they already were. When the healer noticed Nat was awake, he explained what was going on. Later, the healer showed Nat how to work the glasses that were meant to help him adjust his extra sense so he didn’t get overwhelmed and end up in the hospital again. The healer then explained that the reality fault was the most likely cause, since he wasn’t from a magical family, and his parents couldn’t think of any relatives who had any sort of sixth sense.

So, while Nat knew that his magic _had_ been affected by the reality fault, he hadn’t really thought that his ability to use a wand would have been affected.

“You spark, sometimes, too,” Lovegood added, after Nat had been silent for a few seconds. “It’s like you’re carrying lightning in your hands.”

 _That_ was something Nat remembered doing at his old school sometimes, when he was angry at people who used his wrong name. But when Ms. Michaels had explained about accidental magic (which was supposed to stop once he started Hogwarts), he had thought that that was what it was. Maybe it wasn’t.

“I don’t know,” Nat said, not really sure what he was replying to. “You’re probably right, though. About the wand magic. Someone at St. Mungo's told me that that reality fault might have some effect.”

“Well you can always figure out a different way to do wand things, if you need to. And you’re good at potions, anyway.” Lovegood reached up and pulled a book off the shelf that was entitled _An Introduction to Runic Transfiguration_.

“Would you like some help with your project?” She asked, and Nat thought maybe Hogwarts wouldn’t be as bad as he’d thought after all.


End file.
